Political Partisanship, Religion, and the Pandemic: On Fire Christian Center v. Fischer

Prior to the Easter holiday this year, Mayor Greg Fischer in Louisville, Kentucky, made a decision to prohibit all church and worship gatherings within the city. This decision by the Mayor was said to be an attempt to minimize the risks created by the COVID-19 pandemic and an attempt to “save lives.” As a result, the On Fire Christian Center filed for a temporary restraining order claiming that the prohibition attacked their ability to properly celebrate a religious holiday central to their faith and acted as a violation of their free exercise of religion.

Judge Justin Walker of Louisville decided the case. In his court opinion, Judge Walker found in favor of the On Fire Christian Center and against Mayor Fischer. He granted the On Fire Christian Center a temporary restraining order to ignore the Mayor’s prohibitions. The main reasoning behind his opinion was the idea that the Mayor had unfairly targeted religious groups with this prohibition by restricting a holiday so critical to the Catholic faith.

One of the major issues brought up as the basis of the lawsuit at the very beginning of the court’s opinion is the question of whether or not Mayor Greg Fischer’s prohibition of these services acted as a violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Did the mayor’s choice to prohibit all church and worship gatherings during a pandemic violate the rights of religious groups to freely exercise their religion and place an undue direct burden on them?

This issue is important for many other reasons, specifically in regards to how the COVID-19 pandemic will play a role in establishing a precedent for legal intervention during future health crises. The role of COVID-19 in the judicial branch has been approached differently by different courts and different judges so each case carries weight into how this will affect future health crises. It also plays a significant role in judicial treatment of religion and whether or not the courts will begin to stray from a more strict interpretation of the religious clauses of the first amendments or if there will be greater support for separation of church and state in legal decision making.

Overall, I disagree strongly with the decision of Judge Walker in today’s case. I believe that the public health and safety of citizens should always come first before any other concern. Part of Mayor Fischer’s reasoning for his prohibition of services came as a result of the city’s neglect towards the mayor’s neutral emergency orders that he put into place for all citizens. Though the church prohibition was specific towards religious organizations, it was a result of bigger neutral guidance by the mayor towards all types of in-person programming. After multiple recorded instances and witnessed violations of safety guidelines and restrictions at drive-in church services, Mayor Fischer enacted the rule as a direct result of those violations in an attempt to “emphasize again to people that the science behind this is really, really clear and all [he was] trying to do here is save lives and we’ve got to show the discipline to get through this and we can worship again when we're in a safer mode.” Another reason I take issue with Judge Walker’s opinion is that it included the strong language of a religious bias as reasoning, which should not have played a role in his decision-making of the case. By using language in his opinion that directly promotes the role of religion and also directly expresses an interest against a political party in the United States before even beginning to discuss the facts of the case at hand until page seven of his opinion, he expresses a clear disinterest in a ruling based on the legality of the matter and rather on a partisan agenda.

However, I do find some agreement in one specific idea of his argument and that is the idea that church and worship services should not be considered the sole target of this prohibition. This kind of prohibition that singles out religious services and is not a neutral restriction towards nonreligious and religious services. At the time of the mayor’s decision, drive-through restaurants and liquor stores were still allowed to be open. However, with the lack of certainty in the facts of the case that the churches themselves were specifically targeted, we cannot be certain that they were in fact singled out in this type of way. So overall, I find extreme flaws with the opinion and would disagree with the outcome of the case. 

The prior precedent of the courts do not support the decision made by Judge Walker in today’s case and rather support the idea that the government has a right to intervene in religion if it has a compelling state interest to do so. Take the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a case that Judge Walker himself references in his opinion. Jacobson v. Massachusetts established a legal precedent that constraints of constitutional law are not rigidly fixed in times of national emergency. In that case, the courts held that residents needed to be vaccinated against smallpox because it was a health crisis. Other cases that establish a precedent that goes against Walker’s decision are Employment Division v. Smith and Reynolds v. United States. In Employment Division v. Smith, the government was allowed to deny religious organizations the ability to use drug use in religious services and deny those individuals unemployment benefits as it was a threat to the overall national security and well-being of people in the country. In Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that a federal law prohibiting polygamy did not violate the free exercise clause in the terms that it was a challenge to the overall compelling state interest. Precedents like these establish that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to government intervention if there is a greater compelling state interest for the health and safety of the citizens. 

The decision made by Judge Justin Walker holds dangerous implications for further cases. If future courts and judges were to agree with the decision made in On Fire Christian Center v. Fischer, the courts would be setting up an unconstitutional precedent that would willingly put the lives of citizens at risk. Now that we are entering a time in politics and government where conservative vs progressive values are constantly being challenged and debated, it is important for legal decisions to be made primarily on the basis of their constitutionality and legality, not in support of one political side or the other. The problem with letting Judge Walker’s decision stand is that it encourages a culture of partisanship within the judicial branch of government, which should be the branch least affected by partisan goals.